


ON SOME OF THE 

CONSEQVENCES OF 

EATING HISTORICAL 

STRAWBERRIES 




DA 260 
.H98 
Copy 1 



ON SOME OF THE CONSE- 
QUENCES OF EATING HIS- 
TORICAL STRAWBERRIES 

FROM A SERIES OF CLUB ESSAYS 
BY JAMES NEVINS HYDE 



CHICAGO 

THE BLUE SKY PRESS 
MCMIII 



, 






A.' 



Copy rig ht 1 00 J by 
James Nevms Hyde 



Dedicated 
To My Wife 






ON SOME OF 
QUENCKS OF 
TORICAL 



THE CONSE- 

EATING HIS- 

STRAW BERRIES 



THE words, Richard the Third, King of 
England, are employed in this day, for the 
designation of several different characters. 
The first, and by these words most com- 
monly indicated, is the poetic ruffian who sustains 
such an important part in the two plays of our im- 
mortal dramatist entitled, respectively, The Third 
part of King Henry VI, and The Life and Death 
of King Richard the Third. Next after may be 
named the creations of a number of English authors 
who have taken different views of the historical 
Richard, and have therefore painted him in colors 
varying from an immaculate white through several 
shades of grey departing from the sombre blackness 
of the portrait drawn by the great playwright. 
Lastly may be mentioned the character least fre- 
quently associated with the name, the man him- 
self, who on the 24th day of June, 1483, was en- 
throned as an English sovereign, and set the great 
seal of England to his intricate but scholarly signa- 
ture, Ricardus Rex. 

In the brief limits of this sketch, it is not pur- 
posed to attempt the task of portraying this real 
man, as distinguished from his several counterparts. 
However interesting and profitable such a study 
might prove, it would be probably unrewarded 
with practical results. Between the man who once 
bore the name and successive generations of his 

'3 



race, fate has flung a cunning web, spun from 
the mists of speculation, the shadows of tradition, 
and the lies of Lancastrian historians, which ever 
assumes the familiar shape given it by the wonder- 
ful witchery of the great poet. 

The humbler task is here attempted to trace the 
connection between the several fadts which explain 
the existence in English literature of this double 
or counterpart, of the Third Richard. The fadts 
themselves are well known, but their relations are 
not very generallv understood. Even so late as the 
year of Grace, 1887, an anonymous writer pub- 
lished his belief that the Richard of Shakespeare is 
the Richard of History. His statement is a true 
one, even though it involves an error. The two are 
certainly one, but by no trick of jugglery can that 
one be transformed into the real Plantagenet whom 
our ancestors in the Fifteenth Century loved, 
hated, crowned, and Anally slew. 

Not a few of those who have taken interest in 
these questions have reached their conclusions after 
reading Horace Walpole's (Lord Oxford's) "His- 
toric Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Rich- 
ard the Third. " It is scarcely needful to add that 
the "doubts" set forth in order by the writer of 
this well known work, can be well removed by 
admitting that Richard was a knight, like the 
Chevalier Bayard, not only without fear, but also 
without the slightest moral reproach. The spot- 
less character suggested, is as absurd and improb- 
able in view of aclual facts, as any of the other lit- 
erary wraiths of the dead monarch. In fad:, it may 
well be doubted whether the noble author himself, 

14 



when he wrote his book, entertained the slightest 
belief in the doubts which he so plausibly set in 
order; or, after his labor was finished, cared a farth- 
ing whether the subject of his sketch was calen- 
dered as a saint or denounced as a devil. He wrote, 
as Macaulay has well shown, with his lordly face 
concealed by a triple mask. He strung together 
his data about Richard, with no deeper interest in 
his work and no nobler end in view than that 
which led him to decorate his hall on Strawberry 
Hill with fragments of ancient pottery and old 
spear-heads picked up at Acre and purchased for 
him by his agents in Paris. Walpole, in short, was 
a mere collector of literary bric-a-brac, with the 
singular demerit of both disguising his interest in 
the pursuit, and stoutly denying its actual engross- 
ment of his time and attention. 

Richard Plantagenet, eighth son of Richard and 
Cecily, Duke and Duchess of York, was born at 
Fotheringay Castle on the 2nd day of October, 
1452. But for his Double, or Counterpart, must 
be assigned another birth-day, and a longevity 
which for more than tour centuries has survived 
the dust of the mortal man himself. This Counter- 
part was begotten on Friday, the 1 3th day of June, 
1483, when the real Richard was thirty-one years 
old. For a moment recall the circumstances of this 
interesting event. Those who may have witnessed 
the representation of the scene on the contracted 
stage of the play-house with a mean and meagre 
environment, should dismiss from the mind the 
impressions there produced. 

From the Inner Ward of the enclosed structures 

15 



called the Tower of London, rises the solid mas- 
onry of the enormous White Tower; and, in what 
we to-day would call its third story, is the great 
Council Chamber. It is one of the marvels of early 
English architecture, dating as far back as the days 
of Stephen. The heavy flat roof with towers at 
each of its four angles, is lifted ninety feet in the 
air, its enormous oaken joints and bands indicating 
that it was designed not merely for a palace, but for 
a fortress with both tocsin and ward. Its walls, 
nearly fourteen feet in thickness, are pierced for 
the operations of the bowman and balestier, the 
ancestors of those who should later serve the car- 
ronade. Even at this early day it has its historic 
associations, for the fair and chaste Maud Fitz- 
walter, prisoner in one of the towers at the angles, 
once trod its oaken floors with wearv feet, and was 
followed by Prince Charles of Orleans, one of the 
very few royal prisoners, whom the great Tower 
has first swallowed and then disgorged to sit upon 
a throne. From its deep embrasures Richard is to 
look this fateful day upon the death of the volup- 
tuary Hastings beheaded at his word, little dream- 
ing, doubtless, as he looks, of those who are to 
stand there after him, and peering down upon the 
( Xueen's stairway and the outer gate, see that sad 
and splendid procession pass representing the 
strongest, wisest, and fiirest of English blood; 
Elizabeth, but a slender girl, the courtly Raleigh, 
the brave Wallace, the gentle Lady Jane Grey, the 
scholarly Sir Thomas More, and what words may 
describe the others whose names are dear to us and 
to all who love their race! 

16 



It is an early hour of this June morning, and the 
English nightingales have scarcely ceased their 
full-throated spring-song. At a long tahle in the 
centre of the hall, are seated most of the members 
of the Royal Council, a body largely holding the 
power possessed by the Parliaments of succeeding 
reigns. Not all the members, however, are here, 
for some are gathered apart at Westminster. We 
are sure though, that Lord Hastings, Lord Stanley, 
and the Bishop of Ely are seated at the table. 
Richard is at this moment, advancing to the hall 
through the triforium of St. John's Chapel com- 
municating by a stairway with the royal apart- 
ments. As he enters, let us strive to see him exactly 
as he is, and describe him in words that can be sub- 
stantiated by facts. 

The Duke of Gloucester is not yet thirty-one 
years old. His elder brother, ten years his senior, 
Edward the Fourth, King of England, came to a 
peaceful close of his life at Westminster, just two 
months ago, alter expressly arranging in his will 
that Richard should be the guardian of his minor 
children, the elder of his two boys being heir to 
his throne. In their minority Richard is to be Pro- 
tector and head of the Government. Not even the 
most blinded of partisans can doubt for a moment, 
that these two brothers, the dead King and the 
living Duke, loved and trusted each other fully. 
Well indeed, they might. Their fraternal affection 
had been tested in the dint of battle and cemented 
by the blood of their common adversaries. To- 
gether they had avenged the brutal ferocity, only 
equalled by that of our North American savages, 

l 7 



which after striking down their princely father in 
battle, had cut off his head and fastened it, with a 
paper crown on the brow, over the battlements of 
York. Even a modern jury would be asked, in ren- 
dering a verdicl: in the case of the sons to consider 
the "extenuating circumstances. " 

Edward had repaid with no niggardly hand the 
brother whose indomitable valor had won his 
crown. For nearly eight years that brother proved 
the staunchest bulwark of his throne, proof against 
the blandishments of wily enemies to whom a third 
brother succumbed. Richard is Admiral of Eng- 
land, Ireland, and Acquitaine; and Steward of the 
Duchy of Lancaster beyond Trent. As he enters 
the Council Chamber this morning, he is probably 
one of the wealthiest princes in Europe. All the 
lands and other possessions of the Earl of Oxford 
are his. His castles and manors are strewed innum- 
erable from Fotheringay, in North Hampshire to 
Clare, in Suffolk. This young veteran of war, who 
at the age of nineteen commanded the vanguard at 
Barnet and a few days later won the field at Tewks- 
bury, is an evidence that not all governments are 
ungrateful. 

Furthermore, we are sure that as the Duke of 
Gloucester enters the Council Chamber this morn- 
ing, he is comelv in person and neither dwarfed 
nor deformed in figure. Few today give credence 
to the fabulous accounts of a physical condition 
which he has been made to describe in verse relat- 
ing to himself, as "contracted of this fair propor- 
tion," "not shaped for sportive tricks, " "cheated 
of feature, " "sent before my time into the world, 

18 



not half made up, and that so lamelyand unfashion- 
able that dogs bark at me as I pass them by. " Alt 
this nonsense we now know to have originated 
with the fairy tales of the nursery. The Countess 
of Desmond, who once had the honor of dancing 
with Richard, left it on record that her partner 
was "the handsomest man in the room, excepting 
his brother Edward and very well made. " None 
of the many portraits painted of King Richard in 
his life betrav the slightest physical defect, and as 
for that in which one shoulder is represented as a 
trifle higher than the other, this detail cannot be 
twisted into a deformity, since there is scarcely a 
portrait in the roval collection that does not ex- 
hibit such difference. The true artist does not 
draw his subject with shoulders squared by a car- 
penter's rule. 

We are all familiar with the features of the 
Windsor portrait, which is unquestionably the 
best of all. It might well serve as a picture of 
the studious Hamlet. The face is clean-shaven, the 
lips thin, the eyes grey, the features smooth, the 
expression one of intellectual refinement mingled 
with gentleness and sadness. The face is one which 
compares with that of other British sovereigns 
greatly tothed : sadvantageof the most in that long 
line and in particular those of the Four Georges. 
There is one fact, however, in favor of Richard's 
physical comeliness which it is surprising that 
none has noticed in this connection. When he and 
his Queen were crowned in Westminster Abbey, 
the royal pair came down from their seats before 
the high altar, and putting off their robes of state 

l 9 



stood naked from the middle upward while they 
were anointed by the Archbishop, after which 
they were clad in cloth of gold. It is difficult to 
believe that a man, admitted to have been vain of 
his person, who could by his royal authority have 
arranged this ceremonial so as to spare himself a 
humiliating exposure ol a physical defecl, would 
have thus advertised his deformity to his entire 
court. 

Lastly, the Duke had often shown himself more 
than a match in military action, lor the strongest 
and largest adversaries, and that in a day when men 
fought face to face with battle-axe and spear. 
There is still preserved in the College of Arms, 
which he founded, an excellent portrait of him 
and his son in full battle-harness, armored with 
casquetal, gorget, and piuldrons. The truth is, 
that in his day the world had only learned the pri- 
mitive lesson that greatness belonged only to the 
physically great. The hour had not then struck 
when men were to be worshipped as heroes who 
had slender bodies and heroic souls. Richard, in 
fadt, had the dauntless spirit and the boyish figure 
of Napoleon at the Bridge of Lodi, Nelson at Tra- 
falgar, and Sheridan at Five Forks. 

He enters the room now at a supreme crisis of 
his life, strong in the sound health of his early 
manhood; uncorrupted by the debaucheries of the 
late King, his brother; rich in honors, in wealth, 
and in that most precious of all the shining oppor- 
tunities of his strange career. The man has not 
lived who today casts a reproach upon his char- 
acter, or stains his knightly scutcheon with a 

20 



smirch of foulness. He is a Plantagenet, the last, 
though he knows it not, of the blood of that 
princely line. 

At this awful moment, events have so curiously 
shaped themselves, that — for the first time in his 
life — the glittering bauble of the English crown 
is within his easy reach. He has determined to 
grasp it at every hazard. Trained from his very 
boyhood to push on in the bloodiest path to vic- 
tory, he will prove to the world the purity of his 
breeding and the thoroughness of his training by 
accomplishing his end. He will sweep away from 
his path, as the flimsy threads of a cobweb, the 
lives of the two Princes, Edward, the young heir 
to the throne, only thirteen years old, and Richard, 
the little Duke of York four years the junior of his 
brother. He will send a fatal dart into the breast 
of every man who opposes him. Over the prostrate 
bodies of his victims, fewer perhaps than those 
which served as stepping-stones for Alexander, 
Cassar, Constantine, and Hannibal, he has deter- 
mined to mount to the throne. The strong tension 
of his mind at this moment is like that of thesturdy 
yew-tree bows of his sinewy archers, which, when 
released, could send their cloth-yard arrows clean 
through the body of a stalwart man. 

When the mind is in this state of activity it can 
busy itself with the veriest trifles of thought, just as 
the deaf man may hear a whisper when his audi- 
tory nerve is stirred in the din made by a thunder- 
ing train of cars. Tennyson has aptly illustrated 
this well known peculiarity in his poem of Maude, 
thus proving the admitted truth that the poets are 

21 



always clear-sighted in the study of human emo- 
tion. The singer of the verse has received a blow 
full in the face from the hand of the brother of 
the woman he loves. That brother he has just 
stretched at his feet with a blow in retaliation. 
The sudden passionate cry for blood rings in his 
ears as he flies. Yet at the instant his overwrought 
brain can take cognizance of a small shell: 

"See what a lovely shell ! 
Small and pure as a pearl, 
Lying close to my feet, — 
Frail, but a work divine, 
Made so fairly well, 
With delicate spire and whorl, 
How exquisitely minute, 
A miracle of design ! " 

This is the clue to Richard's odd aclion. One 
of those present at the Council, and one who had 
no reason to deceive at least in this particular, set 
it down later that the Duke of Gloucester at this 
moment accosted John Morton, the Bishop of Ely, 
and asked him for a " messe" of the good straw- 
berries that were in the Bishop's garden at Hol- 
born. The Duke knew well the resources of the 
famous garden at Ely House. He had been there 
in fad, quite lately at the death of Duke John of 
Lancaster, and had seen with his own eyes its luxu- 
riant beauty. Somewhat later, this fine garden was 
leased to Sir Christopher Hatton, and we read that 
a part of its stipulated rental was the annual delivery 
of twenty bushels of roses. There is no difficulty in 
believing that the strawberries asked for, were re- 
markably fine. 

22 



It is far more difficult to believe, however, that 
Richard asked for them because he wished to have 
them, or, when the Bishop sent for them, and the 
Duke of Gloucester entering the apartment some- 
what later, received them from Ely's hand and ate 
them, that Richard was really conscious of what 
he was doing. He very probably seized them 
mechanically bv the hulls with his ringers and con- 
veyed them to his mouth after dipping them in a 
bowl of sugar, i 

The effect of this episode upon the mind of the 
Bishop was probably altogether unsuspected by 
Richard. If Ely had not been treacherously dis- 
posed before — a fad: of which there is not any 
evidence — this circumstance seems to have 
effectively raised his gorge. He had come to 
the Council at that early hour of the morning 
to arrange for the coronation of a king, the young 
son of the dead sovereign. Instead of being con- 
sulted, however, on such high matters of state, he 
had only been asked to pander to the appetite of 
the insolent Duke, who was then only rilling a 
brief interregnum in the succession ! It was gall 
to him to think that he had set forth to place a 
crown, and had been despatched instead for a ridi- 
culous mess of strawberries ! The Prelate cast a 
baleful look on the Prince as he swallowed the 
fruit. How little Richard dreamed that then and 
there he faced a sealed fate ! The cockatrice's egg 
laid that instant in the brain of the priest, was des- 
tined to hatch out its monstrous progeny ! We can 

I The eminent tragedian, Booth, when performing his part in this 
famous scene, committed the blunder of" eating the strawberries with a 
spoon in the American fashion! 

2 3 



see it all now, alter these years. The arrogant and 
ambitious Duke doubtless thought that the power 
he possessed was absolute over every person in the 
room, yet he was there but as clay in the hands of 
one skillful potter. The Bishop of Ely would have 
been more merciful if he had sprinkled his straw - 
berries withadeadlv poison, and Richard had died 
in agony after eating them. Or if, instead, Lord 
Stanley, (who shrank under the table to escape the 
stroke aimed at his head when the men-at-arms 
rushed in later at the cry of "treason ! ") had thrust 
into Richard's heart the dagger at his side, the 
real victim of the scene had had a happier fate. 
Or, lastly, if Richard, instead of cutting off Hast- 
ing 's head before he would sit down to dinner, had 
sent the amorous fool back to his mistress, and des- 
patched the Bishop in his stead to the extempo- 
rized block in the Tower yard, the course of his- 
tory would have been changed. 

It w r as ordered instead, that Hastings should die, 
that Stanley should live, and that the Bishop of 
Ely should suffer imprisonment in charge of the 
Duke of Buckingham, in the palace of Breck- 
nock, in Wales, where we must follow him in 
order to understand the further course of events. 

John Morton, Bishop of Ely, was now forty- 
two years of age. He w r as a college-bred man, 
having studied law at Oxford and practised also in 
the Court of Arches. He was, however, far more 
of a politician than either priest or lawyer, having 
probably entered the church purely tor political 
ends. Macaulay well describes the man of this 
type as "the calm and subtle prelate, versed in all 

24 



that was then considered learning; trained in the 
schools to manage words, and in the confessional 
to manage hearts; seldom superstitious, but skill- 
ful in practising on the superstition of others; false, 
as it was natural that a man should be, whose pro- 
fession imposed on all who were not saints the 
necessity of being hypocrites; selfish, as it was 
natural that a man should be who could form no 
domestic ties and cherish no hope of legitimate 
posterity; more attached to his order than to his 
country, and guiding the politics of England with 
a constant side-glance toward Rome. " 

Morton, who might actually have sat for this 
portrait in words, was one of those politicians who 
whatever side may triumph, never suffer personal 
defeat. The men of his kind live in all ages, and 
are not wanting in our own. This morning, the 
illustrated sheets devoted to caricature, issue a car- 
toon representing a political grave-yard, in which 
are to be seen tomb-stones placarded with the name 
of sundry supposititious statesmen, who are here 
proclaimed to be "dead. " Next year comes a fresh 
cartoon. A youthful figure in the fore-ground, 
with the dawn of a new light upon his radiant 
brow, is hoisting a banner inscribed with the not 
unfamiliar device " Reform ! ' ! About him are a 
group of actively interested men, whose faces are 
no less familiar. They are our old friends, late of 
the political " grave-yard. " We greet them with 
our accustomed cheerfulness. We were looking 
for them, and lo, they are here ! They are always 
with us. 

Morton had been one of the Council of Henry 

2 5 



VI, but after the defeat of the Lancastrians had 
escaped to Flanders and we next rind him at the 
Court of the victorious Edward, playing his part 
with such effed: that he is made Bishop of Ely and 
lord ot the famous Holborn garden, where he dis- 
tinguishes himself in the culture of roses and straw- 
berries. He officiates at Edward's death-bed, and 
we find him immediately turning up smiling at 
the new court of the Protestor, bent, as usual, upon 
either managing the government himself, or ren- 
dering it as unpleasant as possible to make any 
other arrangements. Whether he had or had not 
contemplated treason prior to the strawberry epi- 
sode, it is certain that immediately afterward he 
justified Richard's suspicions by committing the 
very offence suspecled. He promptly seduced 
Buckingham, his lordly jailor, from his allegiance 
to the Protector, and the moment he had made 
sure of the overt rebellion of his victim, speedily 
escaped to his former hiding-place in Flanders, 
ready for the next move which would make him 
whole on the strawberry account. Bacon quaintly 
tells the story in the remark that " Morton did 
secretelv incite the Duke of Buckingham to revolt 
from King Richard, but after the Duke was en- 
gaged and thought the Bishop should have been 
his chief pilot in the tempest, the Bishop was 
gotten into the cock-boat and fled over beyond 
the seas. " 

Once in Flanders, Morton put himself into 
communication with Henry Tudor, Earl of Rich- 
mond, who later, by his chief assistance, became 
Henry VII, of England. Henry was at this 

26 



moment casting about for instruments wherewith 
to pick the lock that protected the much-coveted 
English crown. He wrought his end here, pre- 
cisely as in all other of his successes, bv strictly 
following two very simple rules: the first was, 
never to do that with his own hands which could 
be done better for him by a good tool ; second, 
never to neglecl or lose that tool after once found 
useful. In Morton, he found his Tool. Henry was 
already keeping that mysterious note-book, which 
on a day later became the spoil of his monkey to 
the delight of his Court, and in which he set down 
in his secret way, the names of his agents, how far 
thev might be trusted, and the smallest of the re- 
wards they could be persuaded to accept for faith- 
ful service. Richard, accustomed to hew his own 
way upon the battle-field whither he chose, des- 
pised the shifty and servile tool which Henry found 
so well fitted to his hand. It is difficult to conceive 
a greater contrast than that between the Earl of 
Richmond and the man he sought to discrown. 
Henry was as cowardly in spirit as Richard was 
brave, but as subtle and selfish as the priest whom 
he befriended for his own personal ends. He was 
not a voluptuary like Edward, nor an imbecile like 
the dead Henry VI, but one of that ignoble class 
of misers whose passion in life is the amassing of 
wealth solely for the sake of its accumulation. He 
was tall, without the dignity that attaches to 
height, and red-headed without the sanguine tem- 
perament that is usually associated with that color 
of the hair. He was a bastard son of John of 
Gaunt, legitimated only by special statute, and 

27 



could not exhibit on his coat of arms the sang pur 
of the princely Plantagenet. When Richard on 
Bosworth Field swore that he would die King of 
England with his crown upon his head, and rushed 
upon his faint-hearted antagonist, the "Welsh 
milk-sop," as Richard called his adversary, took 
great care to protect himself behind a special guard 
of spearmen. If for one moment Richard had met 
him hand to hand in the open field, Henry Tudor 
would probably have shared the fate of his stan- 
dard-bearer, a more valiant man than he, Sir 
William Blandon, and the mighty Sir John Che- 
ney, both of whom were unhorsed and stretched 
senseless at the feet of the soldier-king. The real 
vi&or at Bosworth Field was not Henry, but 
Morton. Think of it! An English army on Eng- 
lish soil, superior in numbers, led by a veteran 
general, who was, without doubt, the bravest 
prince in Europe, worsted by an army inferior in 
numbers, consisting for the most part of frog- 
eating Frenchmen, led by a man who had never 
before been on the field of battle, and even then 
was afraid to face the storm of English arrows ! 
The mortality on Richmond's side was less than 
one hundred ! The priest it was who won the vic- 
tory. We can almost see him wink at Henry when 
the farce was over ! He had plotted, and counter- 
mined, and seduced, till the army that Richard 
led into the field crumbled to pieces before it had 
fairly faced the enemy. Richard before he fell, 
sounded the key-note of the piece, when he 
shouted " Treason ! " Morton knew well who had 
won the day. So did Henry, and he was never per- 

28 



mitted to forget it. Now the two looked on the 
mangled body of the prince whom they had re- 
jected, slain in the fore-front of the tight, as were 
his proud father and his lion-hearted ancestor of 
the same name, stark naked, covered with dust and 
gore, a halter about his neck, trussed across the 
back of a horse like a butchered calf behind Rich- 
ard's own poursuivant-at-arms, Blanc Sanglier, 
and so carelessly carried that in crossing a bridge 
the royal head was bruised against a stone. Did 
the Bishop of Ely admit (think you ? ) that his 
strawberry account was now settled in full ? No! 
There was a deadlier revenge to follow, and the 
prelate was to bear in that, even a more con- 
spicuous part than in this. 

With Henry VII safe on the throne, the man 
who, by the arts of the Jesuit, had conquered at 
Bosworth Field, reaped his reward. He was made 
a member of the Privy Council; and later, Lord 
High Chancellor of England; was enthroned, 
the next year, as Archbishop of Canterbury ; and 
at last by the urgent solicitation of his master, 
given the red hat of a Cardinal by Pope Alexander 
VI. The remuneration for the old Holborn straw- 
berries had been at nearly the exorbitant rates 
charged for depredations committed by the late 
army of the Union upon some Southern potato- 
patch ! 

With Henry VII on the throne, moreover, 
there were none too high to do reverence to the 
House of Tudor; none too low to add a handful to 
the mud heaped plentifully on the ruined House 
of Plantagenet. The road to royal favor lay in this 

29 



direction, and the preserves of that most uncertain 
of pleasure-parks, were hedged about with ob- 
loquy of the dead. Morton now Cardinal-Chan- 
cellor remained secure next the throne and next 
also to the heart of the selfish king, by his great 
success in two lines: First, he served as the willing 
tool of the monarch in raking into the rapacious 
pocket of his sovereign every penny that could be 
extorted from any well-tilled purse in the realm; 
second, he helped to blacken the memory of the 
butchered soldier-king by the utmost refinement 
of his art. ' Tis a wonder the success was not flaw- 
less. But it was not. Even the foulest pool will at 
midnight reflect the light of an overhanging star. 
There was not wanting a proclamation, issued 
under Henry's nose, declaring that "Richard like 
a true Plantagenet, was honorable, and loved the 
honor and contentment of the realm and the com- 
fort of the common people; " and when the York- 
shiremen were pressed for a subsidy to go into the 
new king's treasury, even Bacon had to write, that 
the mutiny which followed was "by reason of the 
old humour of those countries, where the name of 
King Richard was so strong, that it lay like lees at 
the bottom of men's hearts, and if the vessel was 
but stirred it would come up. " 

It is told of a Ri^ht Reverend member of the 
Bench of Bishops of the Protestant Episcopal 
Church, that when he visited England in the early 
days of his Episcopate, he was there entertained at 
a great dinner given by the Archbishop of York to 
a number of dignitaries of the Ecclesiastical estab- 
lishment as well as to his American colleague. 

3° 



During the repast, the Archbishop turned to his 
guest and enquired: "Ah! my Lord, is your See 
well founded?" To which the Bishop replied: 
"Thank you, your Grace, I can hardly say that. 
But then, you know, I receive my small salary 
pretty regularly : and we get on nicely, very nicely, 
thank you, as my wife and I teach in our little 
school for young people, and in that way we make 
a trifle more. " It is said that the unaffected sim- 
plicity of this reply, so wrought on the hearts of 
those present, that when he returned home, the 
Bishop's " See" was better founded than when he 
left it ! 

The new Cardinal-Chancellor of Henry VII in 
almost the fashion of the primitive frontier clergy- 
men of America, was fain to eke out the emolu- 
ments of his office by taking a few pupils. He 
received into his establishment, which was then 
looked upon as one of the aristocratic schools of 
the period, a number of proper youths who per- 
formed menial services for the Cardinal, and were 
supposed to receive in return such a discipline in 
mind and manners as would consort with the 
bodily nutriment derived from the cold scraps of 
the Cardinal's table. Among these youths, Master 
Thomas More officiated, who, as he handed his 
Lord his meat at table, attracted the special atten- 
tion of the shrewd prelate. It was on one of these 
occasions that the Cardinal uttered his well-known 
prophecy about the boy: "Whosoever liveth to 
trie it, shall see this child prove a notable and rare 
man. " Morton was correct in this, as in his earlier 
belief that he could make his strawberries the most 

3i 



indigestible mess a man ever swallowed. 

At this point, we touch the second of the im- 
portant conspirators against Richard's memory. 
But what scholar can pronounce the name of Sir 
Thomas More in any but loving accents ! He was 
early in framing that exquisite pattern which the 
world can never forget and scarcely reproduce. 
He taught us once and for all, that the ripest scho- 
larship of any day is consistent with all that is 
brightest, truest, bravest, and sweetest in lofty 
statesmanship, pure domestic affection, and Chris- 
tian character. He showed its staunch support in 
that perilous extremity, when life and all else that 
a man holds dear are dissolving from his possession. 
The lambent wit that graced his gentle speech 
when he was high in honor, entrusted with Eng- 
land's great seal and a king's arm about his neck, 
did not forsake him for an instant, when he laid 
his pallid cheek upon the headsman's block and 
died with a smile lingering about his lips. 

But we must judge Sir Thomas More as we do 
Richard the Third, by the standards of the day in 
which they lived. Each of these men had not only 
a bright, but a very dark side to his character. Says 
Mr. Froude of More: "The Philosopher of the 
Utopia, the friend of Erasmus, whose life was one 
of blameless beauty, whose genius was cultivated 
to the highest attainable proportions, was to prove 
to the world that the spirit of persecution is no 
peculiar attribute of the pedant, the bigot, or the 
fanatic, but may co-exist with the fairest graces of 
the human character. " It is well known that 
More not only personally racked some of his vic- 

3 2 



tims in the Tower, but had James Bainham for two 
days and nights in his (More's) house chained to a 
post where he scourged with his own hand the 
victim, who perished in consequence, charging 
with his last breath that his death was due alone to 
More. 

To this man in his youth, the most plastic and 
impressionable period of his life, Morton entrusted 
the burden of his malicious revenge. The double 
distillate of his gall was received into the alembic 
of the younger mind, and there refined into a thing 
of artistic horror. It was customary in that day to 
celebrate the church festivals in the Cardinal's 
palace with those public games and plays which 
constituted the real predecessors of the modern 
drama. None received greater applause for excel- 
lence in the performance of these spectacles than 
the young Thomas. He and his companions were 
here taught to personate demons as well as the more 
saintly characters of Scripture history, and there- 
suit was that More is in part responsible tor one of 
the most wonderful demons of English literature. 
It appears that there is progress in education, even 
when one is playing tbe Devil ! 

The book which More wrote as the result of his 
intimacy with the cultivator of strawberries, is 
known as a "History of Richard III. " Never was 
a book worse named. It should be intituled "Sir 
Thomas More's Narrative of the Tale confided to 
him by Cardinal Morton, late Bishop of Ely. " In 
no sense can it be termed a history. No authori- 
ties are cited in it ; the source of its inspiration is 
not named ; not a syllable of proof is adduced in 

33 



support of the monstrous and even fabulous state- 
ments it contains. It is not indeed certain that 
More in its production had any more serious ob- 
ject in view than to enjoy the play of his literary 
genius. The work is but a fragment, broken off in 
the midst of a supposititious conversation between 
Ely and Buckingham in Wales. Two original 
copies are in existence, one in Latin and one in 
black letter English, which fadt has probably given 
rise to the story once credited that one book was 
written by More and another by Morton himself, 
of which there is no proof. Numerous as are its 
sins against the truth, these are well-nigh offset by 
the rare literary excellence of the story. It is a 
quaint and charming composition with a hob- 
goblin for its theme. 

When William Shakespeare set himself to write 
the play entitled, The life and death of King Rich- 
ard III, his task was an easy one. More's so-called 
history was ready at his hand, a work of fiction 
written with a pen having little less power than 
that of the great play-wright himself. The harp 
was there, its strings attuned, its theme composed, 
there was needed only the sweep of the master's 
fingers to awaken the living melody. Further- 
more, Shakespeare had no fear of contradiction 
by contemporaneous writers of more conscienti- 
ousness and less imagination. There were only two 
contemporary historians of note: the Chancellor 
of Croyland, whose narrative is but a brief epitome 
of the events of the time; and Rous, the Warwick 
antiquary, who, writing solely in the interests of 
Henry VII, indulged also in the fabulous tales that 

34 



were in his day eagerly swallowed; for example, 
that Richard was born into the world with hair 
reaching to his shoulders, 'the Scorpion of the 
House of Mars being then in the zodiacal ascen- 
dant. ' Most of the other so-called historians of 
the age, quarried in the mine that More had suc- 
cessfully opened on the spot where Ely 's straw- 
berries had paid such a handsome premium. And 
so Shakespeare had it all his own way. What More 
set down as doubtful, Shakespeare described as fad: 
if it served his poetic requirements. But the great 
poet knew perfectly well what he was doing. He 
was not writing history or even pretending to do 
this. He was engaged in writing plays that would 
prove remunerative; and incidentally the weight 
of his genius was thrown on the financial side of 
the transaction. The most incredible part of this 
chain of events is that what Shakespeare set down 
as facl, succeeding historians have in some cases re- 
peated as fact. As the years slipped by, all this 
artificial fabric became hoary with age. 

It is somewhat remarkable that while Shake- 
speare was engaged in this easy metamorphosis, he 
did not touch with his magic the plaintive tale told 
by More relating to Shore's wife. Most probably 
the unities of his drama required its omission. 

When Shakespeare had written the concluding 
words of his play, Morton's revenge was complete. 
The slaughtered English King, once a breathing, 
hating, loving human being, actuated by a thou- 
sand human impulses, and with a better and worse 
side to his human self, had been converted into a 
fiend only equalled in literature by Milton's Satan. 

35 



In his wonderful epic Milton sang of his arch- 
fiend, when he surveyed the cohorts of his fallen 
army in the depths of hell: 

"Thrice he essayed, and thrice, in spite of scorn, 
Tears such as angels weep, burst forth. " 

But Shakespeare left no room for tears in Rich- 
ard 's composition. His Satan, less god-like and 
more devilish than Milton's, is one of those im- 
perishable creations, which "break Time's heart, 
and make Death gnaw his bony fingers in im- 
potent despair." 

Time fails in which to enumerate the several 
points where the play, The Life and Death of King 
Richard III is at bold variance with undisputed 
historical fadt. The very first scene represents a 
street in which Richard appears wooing Anne, 
Warwick's younger daughter, who figures as a 
mourner by the bier of the dead King Henry VI. 
But at this moment, Richard was only nineteen 
years old, and Anne a girl of 14, though some 
authorities make her age greater by two years. 
This precocious child is made to charge the lad 
with the murder, not only of King Henry, lying 
on the bier, but also of the young prince Edward, 
her husband, for neither of which crimes can 
Richard be held in any degree responsible. As for 
the widowhood of the little girl, of which she 
prates so poetically, it does not appear that she had 
ever seen, much less married the youth of eighteen 
whom she bewails, but had merely been betrothed 

7 J 

to him in childhood, according to the fashion of 
that day, among the English nobles. Even ad- 
mitting that Richard had participated, at so early 

36 



a period in his career, in the murder of these men', 
we are wholly without a motive to attribute to him 
since ten years were to pass before the day would 
come when both Edward and George would be 
removed from between Richard and the crown. In 
that ten years, as we have seen, the Duke of Glou- 
cester had proved devotedly loyal to his broth en 
Richard, however, did woo and win Anne for his 
bride, but in a more romantic fashion than that de+ 
pitted in the play. She had been secreted by her 
brother-in-law, George, Duke of Clarence, with a 
view to retaining the immense Warwick estate in 
his, (George Y) custody. Richard found her in the 
guise of a kitchen-maid, married her, was faithful 
to her, and she became the mother of his only son^ 
the short-lived Prince of Wales. We know cert 
tainly that the king and queen were heart-broken 
over the affliction which this death brought. In* 
deed, if one wishes to believe that Richard were 
reallv as black as he has been painted, it will not 
answer to compare the fidelity of his conjugal rela* 
tions with those of many who before and since his 
day have held the British sceptre. > 

Perhaps the most pathetic scene of the play, is* 
however, that representing the Duke of Clarence 
a prisoner in the Tower, when he relates his meini- 
orable dream to the Keeper, Sir Robert Brackens- 
bury. Rarely have words been penned that equal 
these in the rugged vigor of pure Saxon coupled 
with the power of awaking a tender sympathy for 
the doomed man. Who would gather from peruse 
ing these lines that Clarence had been condemned 
to death after trial by his peers in Parliament, with 

37 



the King himself, Edward IV, not Richard, plead- 
ing the case against him ! His crime had been 
great. Like Richard he had been rewarded by 
Edward with a generous hand, receiving both hon- 
ors and riches, lands and privileges. He had again 
and again joined the Lancastrians against the York- 
ists, and as often been restored to favor. But Clar- 
ence 's sword had alwavs been weighted at the hilt 
with a bag of gold; he strove ever for the highest 
reward. At last he touched the verv depths of 
treason by exhibiting secretly an exemplification, 
under the great seal of Henrv VI, securing his 
(Clarence's) succession to the throne on failure of 
Henry's issue. On this showing he had accepted 
the sworn allegiance of some ot the nobility. If 
ever there were treason against the crown, here 
was the crime, and here the guiltv criminal him- 
self! More expressly states that Richard was inno- 
cent of any connection with Clarence's condem- 
nation and death; but Shakespeare needed that the 
Duke solely should be responsible for his brother 's 
destruction, and there was none to say him nay. 

After Shakespeare came Bacon, altogether too 
wise a man not to know the nature of the field 
where the poet had been gathering flowers, and 
the priest had been dealing in strawberries. In 
moments of candor, Bacon always wrote the truth. 
He declared that "Richard was a prince in mili- 
tary virtue approved, jealous of the honor of the 
English nation, and likewise a good law-maker 
for the ease and solace of the common people. " 
Bacon knew better than any other man what praise 
that was in his mouth. He also saw through and 

38 



through the strawberry cardinal. He wrote that 
he was a "stern and haughty man who had mortal 
enemies at court; was always ready to provide 
for his own satety, and had an inveterate malice 
against the house of York. " But for all this Bacon 
did not hesitate to reproduce the Morton-More 
counterpart of Richard. It is easy to understand 
whv. Bacon wrote his History of Henry VL1, after 
his own fall from power. The King on the throne 
was of the House of Tudor. The man who had 
prostituted his moral character to the lowest depths 
of baseness in the persecution of the fallen Essex 
to please his queen, did not dare to draw a picture 
of the fallen Richard that would offend his king. 
He was an hungered for the few crumbs that still 
fell into his mouth from the royal table. "I will 
not be stripped of my feathers, " he cried. There 
were still twelve hundred pounds annually paid 
him from the King's purse. And so he pocketed 
this, and only let glimpses of the real truth appear 
in his chronicle of the men whom we have des- 
cribed. 

Morton, More, Shakespeare, Bacon, what his- 
torical character could resist the combined assaults 
of these four, priest, scholar, politician, and poet ! 
Suppose for a moment that the issue of the late 
civil war in this country had been the complete 
and overwhelming supremacy ot the South. Sup- 
pose that no newspapers had ever been printed, 
and that books were few and those in a tongue not 
known to the inhabitants of Virginia and Lou- 
isiana. Suppose that the only knowledge had of 
President Abraham Lincoln was derived from the 

39 



writings of four extreme Southern partisans, of the 
ability of Henry Ward Beecher, for example, re- 
presenting the Church in politics; William M. 
Evarts, politics and law ; Theodore Dwight Wol- 
sey, scholarship pure and simple; and Henry W. 
Longfellow, poetry. Can any reasonable person 
doubt that in such event the martyred president 
would have gone down to posterity forever in the 
form of the grinning baboon which in the early 
part of i 86 1 he was represented to be in the Sou- 
thern press! 

And so ends the play! Virtue is all virtuous. 
Vice is wholly vicious. Virtue is not deformed by 
a single vice ; Vice has no single virtue to redeem 
its essential ugliness. Virtue is victorious, and 
plants her triumphant foot upon the neck of pros- 
trate Vice. Ring down the curtain and let us take 
a moment for breath, ladiesand gentlemen, before 
the bell tinkles again, and the curtain rises on the 
farce that is to follow ! 

But something better than a farce was to follow,- 
better by far. ' Tis no great matter today whether 
Richard was morally responsible for this or that 
particular crime, as he rushed over the bodies of 
the slain to his own bloody death. But he and his 
great literary counterpart are like a bold cliff at 
the rim of the sea with a distorted reflection of 
itselt in the waters below rising between the 
treacherous waste beyond and the shining 
peace of the slopes afield. With Richard passed 
away not only the line of the Plantagenets, 
but also feudalism and its associated villenage in 
England. For years they had been the faithful 

40 



nurses of the English yeoman. They had found 
him little better than a naked savage; they left him 
clothed, well fed, well housed, and taught to pro- 
vide house, food, and clothing for himself. But 
his soul was yet wrapped in infinite darkness and 
his mind clouded with the mists of ignorance. 
For the most part he and his fellows had looked 
on with little concern, while the nobles of their 
day stabbed each other with pikes and cut off each 
other's heads. 

But better than a farce was to follow, better by 
far. These nurses were to be succeeded by school- 
masters of a sterner discipline, who should prepare 
him to work out his splendid destiny ! Yes, better 
than a farce : better by far ! 

When Richard fell, the wood was grown and 
cut and fashioned into black letter types that Wil- 
liam Caxton had learned to set, and he was already 
at work doing his first printing in the Almonry at 
Westminster. His precious art was destined to 
kindle, here and there all over English soil, thou- 
sands of twinkling rush-lights, that should be the 
promise of better to follow. When Richard fell, 
the wood was growing in the forests of Spain, that 
was to make, in the next generation, oaken ribs of 
Spanish galleons, that the Duke of Medina Sidonia 
was to command in the great Armada, and the 
fierce gale that scattered their twisted ribs along 
the coast of England and of Ireland, was to fan 
Caxton's twinkling rush-lights into a splendid 
flame. By its pure radiance, the men of our race 
and of our blood were to climb the perilous heights 
of religious and political liberty. When Richard 

4i 



fell, the great clock of our whirling planet struck 
the hour for matins ; and, as we look back on its 
broad face, we can hear again its welcome note 
with the ears of our English fathers, and look out 
with their kindling eyes, as the gloom of the Mid- 
dle Ages begins to lift before that shining dawn, 
whose first faint glimmer lighted up even Bos- 
worth Field. 



42 



Here endeth the paper, ON SOME OF THE 
CONSEQUENCES OF EATING HIS- 
TORICAL STRAWBERRIES, one of a series 
of CLUB ESSAYS written by James Nevins Hyde 
and privately printed by the Blue Sky Press in 
December, MCMIII. Of this edition there are 
One Hundred and Thirty copies on Italian hand 
made paper, this being number ,- 



x- 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



.0 020 679 323 5 






